The feeling of cold seeped deeper into my body and my mind, and rather than dismissing it like Clem had taught me I kept telling myself, over and over, ‘It’s so cold … I’m freezing to death …’ My teeth started chattering, to further acknowledge how cold I was, and this then continued for the remaining four hours. The cold had well and truly taken over and I started shouting under the water, ‘If you’re going to kill me then come on!’ It didn’t seem to help. I just couldn’t snap out of this mindset.
The stupid thing about it was that I knew how it felt to suffer from hypothermia and this wasn’t anywhere near the same feeling I’d had then. Sure it was very uncomfortable, and it made me completely miserable, but if I had thought about it, I would have realised my body could handle it.
I made it to my three-hour drink swimming alone for the majority of the time. I had lost Chris, who I was planning to swim with, and so I had no one to distract me from the negative thoughts. I was now thinking, ‘I’m only halfway … I’m going to die out here!’ I was so miserable; it felt like pure torture. As I swam around, my only incentive was to get to the warm patch at the top of the rock – only to feel the temperature drop again. There was nothing positive about Fungi Rock. I didn’t like the name and I certainly wasn’t enjoying swimming around it – like a goldfish swimming in a bowl.
Somehow I passed the four-hour and then five-hour mark, still as miserable as ever. I counted the final minutes down: fifty-five, fifty, forty-five … I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I eventually caught up with Chris, and swimming together was at least something to focus on. For the final five minutes I was constantly looking at my watch.
At last we were called in, right on the six-hour mark. It was over, thank goodness! I climbed onto the boat, threw my three thick tops on and felt like a train had run me over.
I should have been pleased that I had ticked off another six-hour swim, whereas I was actually quite stressed. This was another wake-up call. I had felt so confident from the six-hour I had completed in Dover and that confidence had just been obliterated. It was a reminder of what I was up against and brought me crashing back down to earth. I reflected on the swim, and I made a deal with myself that I would never let my teeth chatter like that again. I felt that I had succumbed to it and mentally got it all wrong.
We took the boat back to the hotel. I had been dreaming of a warm bath for most of the swim and I couldn’t wait to get back and jump into the tub. I felt so cold – like it had gone right through to the bone.
I was sharing a room with Chris and we were due to meet up with the rest of the group for a debrief. (I must admit I had not been looking forward to sharing a room with Chris – I had done so before when we trained for the Channel relay crossing and he had snored like a foghorn.) When he finished his shower he started talking to me about how tough the swim was and how tired he was. As he was chatting I suddenly realised that he was standing there completely naked, eating a chocolate bar which was like acid to my eyes! I stopped him mid-conversation and said, ‘I’m happy to talk about the swim but for God’s sake put some clothes on, man!’ Chris started laughing, I think realising how funny it must have looked. We went to the group meeting to review the session with everyone and I couldn’t resist telling them all about the chocolate-bar incident, which everyone found very funny.
The next day we’d been planning a one-and-a-half-hour warm-down swim but it had to be abandoned as some of the group were stung badly by jellyfish – including Marcus, who later became my teammate in another Channel relay. He said at one point he came out of the water with two jellyfish stuck to his goggles, as if it were a comedy sketch. As a result we changed location to a nice lagoon (with no jellyfish), did a gentle swim and had a small walk afterwards. I didn’t mind – it was actually nice to have a day off as my shoulder was very painful.
I had three physio sessions in four days to get me through the camp. At least I think he was a physio … He was a huge mammoth of a man who crushed my back with his elbows. His session was in a diving shop, on a table with a towel thrown across it for me to lie on. The odd thing was that I was right next to the window and everyone could see me as they walked past. In fairness, he did seem to take the edge off the pain, but after each session the pain would return as soon as I started swimming again.
Although I had achieved what I’d set out to do, I couldn’t help feeling a little down about my second six-hour swim; it had been much tougher than I had envisaged and I started to question myself again. It was only ten weeks until my Channel swim, after all, and I would potentially need to swim for double that length of time.
When I arrived back in the UK, I booked another session with Clem. Not only did I have the shoulder concern, I also now had the issue of water temperature to contend with. I knew I needed to think differently and not let these worries consume me.
I explained to Clem what had happened in Gozo and how it had affected my performance, we had a few sessions working on different techniques to help me. One of them was thought-stopping: having the ability to realise your mind is drifting into negative thoughts and stopping them before they build and affect your ability to continue. We also looked at the issue of cold water and how to combat it. He suggested I visualise being warm and swimming in a warm ring, the rationale being that if you pictured yourself doing this you couldn’t also be thinking you were cold. I made the decision not to use the word ‘cold’ any more, as if it didn’t exist – it wasn’t a real word so I couldn’t possibly feel that way.
The first time I’d come to see Clem I had told him that I was worried my shoulder would not be capable of making the swim. As I was telling him this, I would touch my shoulder in acknowledgement of the pain. He said, ‘Whenever you talk about your shoulder you touch it, which reminds you of your pain.’ It was as if I was giving it power over me without realising it. I was focusing on it too much and therefore it was becoming a bad habit. After that, I made a conscious effort not to talk about my shoulder and not to touch it any more.
I felt much better after the second session with Clem, and learning mental focusing techniques really seemed to help me get back on track. I was looking forward to using these methods in training. After Gozo my shoulder was very sore and although I wasn’t overly focusing on it, I knew it was important to rest for an entire week to allow the pain to settle. This was tough as I knew other Channel-swimming aspirants were training all the time. I just had to accept my limitations and not allow the setback to affect my belief that I would achieve the swim.
I made the decision not to go to Dover until the third week of May, opting instead to work hard in the pool over shorter distances, doing high-tempo three-quarter-pace swim sets with limited rests. These had served me well over the last eighteen months, improving my speed and stamina. It was also good to save energy by not doing the seven-hour round trip to Dover, while the lake in early May was still only 8 degrees – a couple of thirty-minute swims there would not have been the best use of my time.
At the weekends I would instead test how long I could hold a strong pace for, monitoring my time every 100 metres over 8–10 kilometres. I would also do non-stop three-hour swims on one of the days. Weekends for me became training, eating and resting, then more training before going back to work on the Monday.
On the third weekend in May, Chris and I went to Dover. The temperature was 11.5 degrees and we swam twice, doing one and a half hours the first time, then out to get warm, and then another hour for the second swim. This somehow seemed worse than doing a straight two and a half hours, as we had to get warm and then go through the body shock again. It was good acclimatisation training, which was necessary to get our bodies used to the temperature.
There were around twenty people on the beach braving the water, some of them seasoned cold-water swimmers. You could see who the less experienced ones were as they were shivering uncontrollably, turning blue, and some had tears running down their faces. The cold has a way of affecting you like nothing else I
’ve experienced, but the more dips you have the easier it becomes.
I thought I’d put my new mental focus to the test and fake my way into thinking the cold wasn’t a problem. Chris and I walked into the water with the others and we joked about how warm it was, whereas the majority of them walked in with a visible sense of impending doom. Chris and I were fake-smiling as if we were in 35-degree heat on a beach in Spain, about to have a nice cooling dip.
We started off swimming to the left-hand pier wall, as I had done previously. When we reached the first wall, and before I could even say anything, Chris said, ‘It’s lovely and warm, isn’t it?’ It was just me around and I thought, ‘You don’t have to fool me, Chris.’ I didn’t say much, though, trying to gauge whether or not he was feeling the cold. I tried thinking about swimming in the warm ring, as Clem had taught me, although what was in my mind was that Chris was handling the temperature better than me. I started to think, ‘Why am I so cold, then?’ I tried to stop the thought and instead visualise being warm again. We swam to the opposite wall and he said the same again: ‘I can’t believe how warm it is!’ By now I was a little irritated. I didn’t think he was warm; we were in our swim shorts and unless he was made out of polar-bear fur he would be feeling it like I was.
In reality he was just faking it better, and not only fooling me but also trying to fool himself – so there was method in the madness. It started to make me think that other swimmers could handle the temperature better than I could. It’s strange how the thought of Chris coping with the temperature made it worse, somehow. Maybe that was just my competitive side coming out.
I began chanting, with every stroke, ‘Warm, hot, warm’, ‘Hot, hot, warm’ and other similar alternatives – you would be amazed at how many variations of those two words you can put together. It may seem a very simple and uninteresting strategy, saying that to yourself over and over again, but it seemed after a while to be working. As Clem taught me: you can’t think negative while you’re thinking positive. It’s impossible. I realised that if I continued to say in my head I was warm then I was shutting out any chance of negative cold thoughts entering my mind. It might seem obvious, but it turned out to be a revelation, and if it worked for temperature it could surely work on other things such as my shoulder and the will to succeed. I tested the theory by stopping saying and thinking about any words associated with being warm for a minute and having blank thoughts, and sure enough my mind started drifting into how cold it was, which confirmed the need to do it.
I had learned a lot from this swim: the importance of fooling myself and the power of positive words. Not treating the swim too seriously seemed the best strategy. I now believed that if something was achievable in your mind it was achievable in reality.
As open-water swimming is such a mental game, arguably 80 per cent mental and 20 per cent physical, if your head isn’t in the right place then it will try to get the better of you. I have seen open-water swimmers who can swim all day by themselves when there’s no pressure, but on the day of their Channel swim, when it matters, the moment gets hold of them and they cannot replicate what they’ve achieved in training due to self-doubt and negative thoughts. Open-water swimming is cruel like that; it is one of the most uncompromising sports there is. If you have any gaps in your armour, including emotional baggage, an ocean swim has a way of reminding you of it and eking out the weaknesses. When you are alone with your thoughts and limited stimulus, and you’re feeling physically tired, that’s when the devil on your shoulder wakes up to remind you that it hurts, it’s cold, it’s too far and you should quit.
I was looking forward to the next weekend in Dover as I knew the distance would be increased and it would be another good test. I arrived and the conversation on the beach revolved around the same topic as the previous week: how cold it was. If you ask most open-water swimmers what their primary concern is, they will inevitably say temperature, due to the discomfort and pain it can cause. This week it had increased to 12.5–13 degrees and Freda gave Chris and me a three-hour swim. Although the temperature had increased by around a degree from the previous week, it was still going to be cold; three hours in that temperature would feel a very long time. But on this occasion I was determined to keep saying positive words to myself, over and over again.
As I waded in, I again tried to look at the positive side: it was slightly warmer, so it would be easier. As we swam off, it took me a few minutes to immerse my face, which is one of the more sensitive parts of the body to the cold. When I became more experienced, I learned that by wetting the back of my neck and face, and then putting my shoulders under in a systematic fashion without too much delay, I was priming my body for entry and it wasn’t too much of a shock to the system.
I took my time to the first wall, getting my arms moving gradually and feeling my way through the water. Chris was alongside me and when we arrived at the wall, just like last time, he said, ‘I can’t believe how warm it is.’ I thought, ‘Not again – I’m not falling for it this time!’ I just said, ‘Yeah, it is.’ I started early, tuning into positive thinking again, visualising being warm, telling myself, ‘I am a winner, a champion’ – anything to divert from the reality of what was happening. The power of positive thinking worked, and although it wasn’t pleasant, three hours were successfully completed.
We stayed overnight in Folkestone and did another three hours the following day. This time I planned to get my own back on Chris, and as we reached the first harbour wall I beat him to it.
‘I can’t believe how warm it is!’ I exclaimed.
He said, ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘The last few swims you were telling me how warm it was and only now have I realised you’re right. It’s like a swimming pool. It’s unbelievable. I’m loving it. Come on, let’s keep going!’ I was playing him at his own game.
After a couple of hours of me doing this, Chris said, looking quite miserable, ‘I don’t think it’s that warm, to be honest.’
I said to him, ‘Look how still my hands are – I’m not even shaking!’ What he didn’t realise was that my legs were shaking vigorously underneath. It was amazing, the effect it had on him: like me, he felt worse thinking someone was coping better than he was.
As I had by now completed two six-hour swims, three hours seemed much more manageable. I think it’s easier to convince yourself to carry on when you have swum a longer distance, as there is no excuse to quit.
I had successfully completed another open-water swim and I sensed the following week we’d be up to six hours in a water temperature of around 13 degrees. I had never swum for that long in that temperature before, so I knew it would call on all my mental strength.
11
THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A CHANNEL SWIMMER
I thought about my next challenge all week at work and was excited. It was now June and my Channel swim was only six weeks away. I knew I had to complete every swim Freda set, as I had with all my previous swims. Developing good winning habits was the key for me, leaving no doubt at all of my capability to get across. Success breeds more success, I thought, and I had to keep ticking these swims off.
Chris and I were late in leaving home the following week and it was a rush to get to Dover on time. We had to run and get changed quickly to catch up with the others. Freda looked like she was going to kill us, so we didn’t hang around. I needed to go to the bathroom but there was no time for that.
We started our swim and within thirty minutes I really needed to go for a ‘number two’. I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to hold on for six hours?’ I tried to block it out of my mind. I reached an hour and thirty minutes and I couldn’t hang on any longer – I was so desperate to go. The problem is that when you are face down in the water, you are forced to relax your pelvic floor, and so if you need to go … you need to go! Chris was swimming next to me and I slowed down to allow him to carry on without me. Normally he would just keep on going, but this time he saw me treading water
. It was so embarrassing but I had no choice. Chris made his way back to me and said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Keep swimming, mate, and I’ll catch you up!’
He replied, ‘You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you?’ When I denied it he responded, ‘You are!’
I was mortified and asked him to not mention it to anyone. He agreed and we continued swimming. Within a couple of minutes we passed another swimmer whom we both knew called Ben, and he said, ‘Hi lads – temperature’s not too bad, is it?’
Chris replied, ‘He’s just gone for a dump in here!’
The look on Ben’s face was a picture. He replied with, ‘Oh, great’, put his goggles down and continued swimming. I wanted to kill Chris for doing that to me. I continued swimming with my trunks around my ankles for the next 1.4 kilometres, shivering and giggling at the same time. I thought this was the best method due to the circumstances. The only positive of this situation was that it distracted me from the temperature. I went on to complete the six-hour and Chris took great joy in telling everyone on the beach what had happened which was extremely embarrassing.
This wasn’t the worst experience I had in training - that came the following week. The same thing happened again with my stomach, while doing another 6 hour swim and after three hours I stopped to tread water. I also had a nosebleed and a headache, I was bent over double with stomach ache, I was vomiting and now I was also shivering from being motionless. I was desperate to get out – I couldn’t take any more. I thought, ‘How can I convince Freda that it’s OK for me to come out?’ I had hit rock-bottom mentally and had to find a way to carry on. I remember hearing a story about a giant of a man who was training to swim the English Channel and wanted to get out because he was so cold. He came out of the water in tears in one session, begging to get changed, and Freda marched him by his trunks back into the water. I thought at the time how mean it was, now I realise tough methods like that are required when you are facing such extreme conditions.
Man vs Ocean - One Man's Journey to Swim The World's Toughest Oceans Page 6
